"Mostly we'd drag Main St., and after that we'd sit and listen for the sidewalks to crack."

- A conversation between David Letterman and Roy Orbison, from "The Late Show with David Letterman," 1988.

WINK - Roy Orbison never forgot his hometown, the small oil-patch town in Winkler County, just a little over an hour's drive west of Midland.

Today, a handful of people from here continue to encourage people not to forget Orbison.

The Roy Orbison Museum downtown displays a number of the singer-songwriter's mementos including his trademark sunglasses, an old guitar, his high school yearbook and awards received for his songwriting efforts.

Debbie Carter oversees the museum now and says there's still a steady stream of traffic especially considering how out of the way it is to get to.

"Everybody here is so proud he's from Wink and we want to keep his memory alive," Carter said.

Carter and Wink High School principal Jerry Graves acknowledge, though, that while many of the town's youth know their town is home to someone important named Roy Orbison, many of them don't fully realize the impact he had on popular culture and even on those artists many of them enjoy today.

"Unfortunately, I don't think they're as aware as they should be," Graves said. "They know we have Roy Orbison Days in the summer and we have the Pretty Woman pageant. We've done a pretty good job of letting people know this is Roy's hometown."

Graves said his mother-in-law is the first person to have ever died Orbison's hair black, a look he would keep throughout his 30-year career before his death in 1988.

One man doing all he can to perpetuate Orbison's memory not only in Wink but in Lake Havasu City, AZ, where he also has a home, is Walt Quigley, a self-described Roy Orbison tribute artist. Quigley worked a couple of years ago trying to raise funds for the renovation of the historic Rig Theatre, where Orbison and the Teen Kings and Wink Westerners played long ago. While that effort has taken a back seat because of a lack of funding, Quigley has gone to work on - and recently acquired approval from the Texas State Historical Commission - to install a marker noting Orbison's boyhood home in Wink.

"It's been very difficult getting it established," Quigley said form his Arizona home, where he will live until the summer. "I'm still working on donations to absorb some of the cost. I wish that more was being done (to remember Orbison's legacy.) The superstructure of the Rig Theater is OK, according to the state. If we were to get it established on the National Historical Registry it can never be torn down. We would like to reopen the Rig and move the museum into the lobby of the theater."

Why all this fuss over a man who has been gone for 21 years and lived in such a faraway place?

"For me, Roy Orbison's appearances on stage are almost a godly thing," Quigley said. "I can feel the presence of God there. I'm not a religious person but I am a godly person. And I can feel that. It's as though you're sitting in a pew at church at his concerts.

"Sometimes when you dream it, then it happens. And Roy was the original dreamer."